


A Contest of Cake

by langsdelijn



Series: A Month of Birthdays [1]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Birthdays, Crack, Fluff, Gen, Max vs Carlos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4449689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/langsdelijn/pseuds/langsdelijn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team decides to involve themselves in Carlos and Max' birthdays. This turns out to involve cake, candles, and songs. Carlos adds the competition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Contest of Cake

As the team briefing was winding down, the door opened. And closed long enough later that Carlos could tell it had admitted several more people even without looking. 

Max looked past him, over his shoulder, and frowned. ‘We already did this one,’ he said. The Monza episode of Max vs Carlos, in which the two of them had been confronted with a silly challenge, this time of course with an Italian theme, that they’d flailed and giggled their way through as they always did, had indeed been filmed, and released, yesterday, to the eager thousands (this, Carlos knew because he kept an eye on these things) of viewers on the internet who turned up to watch the things and laugh at their antics, and, most likely, at them. ‘So what’s this about?’

Carlos turned around in his seat to see for himself. Several more people had entered the briefing room, and two of them were armed with cameras. He turned back and shared a look with Max, who shrugged. 

No one else seemed to be particularly surprised by this interruption, though, as conversation around the table shifted too suddenly to an expectant silence and a sea of carefully expressionless faces. One of the cameras, now on the other side of the room, behind Max, beeped on; the other, he thought, had already been recording. Carlos suspected foul play.

And, a short time later, knew he had been right to, when the shrill sound of the Happy Birthday-music played on speakerphone wafted through the corridor, and the door opened once again, this time opening to—he sighed.

‘It’s already been my birthday,’ Carlos pointed out, dubiously watching the—no doubt twenty-one—candle-topped cake be brought in. This fact did not appear to be of any more concern to anyone than Max’ subsequent protestation that his was still almost a full month away.

All their attention was on the journey of the ill-dated birthday cake, but at least it had ceased to be accompanied by the singing-birthday-card-quality music, which thankfully wasn’t on repeat. 

Carlos glowered into the camera pointed at Max and him, then shifted his gaze to glower at the cake, which had finally been set on the table. It had a little cartoon bull on it with a party hat on, and the candles were yellow (that was meant to be gold, but he was not feeling charitable enough to call it that), red and blue; the team’s media people had clearly spared expense nor creativity in organizing this thing.

‘Well, boys’—Carlos turned around again to face the new speaker, which he perhaps did with a few more dramatics than he would otherwise—‘since both your birthdays are in September—’

‘On opposite sides of September!’ Max interrupted. ‘Our birthdays are nearly a month apart.’

Carlos nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, and to emphasize the point, added, ‘Mine is on the first and his on the last day of the month.’

Franz cleared his throat, indicating that this conspiracy had been thought up at the very highest echelons of the team. ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, with which he clearly considered that part of the discussion over, because he motioned for Martina, the apparent ringleader of the current birthday media circus, to continue.

At his bid to go on, she nodded. ‘We know,’ she acknowledged, with a nonchalant shrug. ‘We haven’t forgotten.’ 

Max and he exchanged a look. It was obvious this plot had been premeditated and spanned the entire team, and it was, without doubt, about to get even worse. ‘But…?’ Carlos hazarded.

Martina smiled. As smiles went, it was just on this side of a smirk, and was worryingly full of promise. ‘As your birthdays bookend the whole of September, and there’s three race weekends this months, we thought we’d celebrate them during the entire month, and give the fans updates throughout.’ 

Carlos stared at her and, from the corner of his eyes, could see Max do the same. ‘So…’

‘A whole month of birthdays!’ Martina beamed, in the proud way of someone who had had and executed a brilliant idea for which consequences fell on someone else.

‘Do we have a choice?’ Carlos asked, after another brief shared glance with Max.

Martina shook her head. ‘No,’ Franz confirmed, at the same time.

‘I turn eighteen,’ Max complained under his breath. Carlos was not entirely sure how he thought that would matter to the birthday madness masterminds in the team, but he supposed he agreed with the sentiment. It was a little too ridiculous, this whole thing, as far as he was concerned. 

‘Carlos,’ Martina began, taking a lighter (of course) from her pocket and handing it off. ‘You first: twenty-one candles for your twenty-first birthday.’ She gestured at the cake to illustrate this obvious point, though he thought it would be funny if they’d miscounted.

‘It was my birthday last Tuesday,’ he informed the camera for good measure. ‘And I received much better gifts.’

Max giggled at that. Carlos kicked in his general direction under the table for ruining his point, but missed, since the angle was awkward. Max, who moved from a more advantageous position, had better aim and landed a halfhearted kick on his shin. He tried to strike back again, and only managed to hit the floor. Max shot him a triumphant look.

Carlos looked back down at the cake and had an idea. ‘Well,’ he said, turning to Max with a grin, ‘then I think you should sing to me!’

A lot of significant looks were suddenly being exchanged around the room, and he realized he’d thought of something they hadn’t yet, but that was a bit of an oversight on their parts, really. 

‘Oh, no.’ Max shook his head. ‘No, no way. I won’t sing.’ Max aimed his best pleading expression at him, but Carlos was immune to it, not least because it bore a great resemblance to his quasi-innocent face, which tended to be worn with intentions of mischief. ‘You’ll have to sing,’ he tried at last, desperate.

‘No, no, that’s a great idea,’ Martina said. ‘You sing Carlos a happy birthday song in Dutch. It’ll be educational,’ she added, and actually winked. (It didn’t surprise Carlos very much that Max kicked him again. He supposed he deserved it, at least a little bit.) ‘Go on, then,’ she urged, as the candles were lit, and the cake was carefully moved into position in front of him.

‘Yeah, Max,’ Carlos said, smiling, a little bit evilly. ‘Sing me a song.’ 

He managed, but only just, not to break down into a fit of giggles at the betrayed sullen look on Max’ face. Max did sing, as fast as he could, probably so he could get it over with as soon as possible, a song that Carlos didn’t understand a word of. He thought he might have recognized a few, but it was sung too fast for him to be sure. ‘What?’ Max asked, an unconvincing picture of wide-eyed innocence, when he was done. ‘That was the whole song.’

‘What does it mean?’ 

‘“Happy birthday,”’ Max supplied helpfully, doing his best not to laugh himself. ‘Now you blow out the candles,’ he added, just as helpful as earlier.

Carlos surveyed the candle layout (he had a system for these things, which admittedly had last been subjected to close scrutiny when his birthday cakes were still bedecked with candles, but that he had confidence) and took a theatrically deep breath. 

‘Yes!’ he shouted triumphantly, one arm raised in victory. He’d succeeded in one try, although the last two had been tricky. Carlos gave himself a point for that, even though this was not, strictly speaking, a competition.

A yellow, red, and blue candle each was plucked off the cake, the remaining eighteen were relit, and moved across the table to Max. ‘And for you, Max,’ Martina picked up again, ‘eighteen candles, for when’—this, she pointedly emphasized, to pre-empt more chronological arguments—‘you turn eighteen. And, Carlos, a song from you in Spanish?’

Max levelled him with an expectant look. In his mental tally, Carlos deducted a point from him out of spite, and launched into a probably-badly sung but definitely-perfectly enunciated version of _Cumpleaños feliz_ , which he, very seriously, followed up with a helpful line-by-line translation without prompting.

‘So, “happy birthday,”’ Max unnecessarily offered in summary.

‘Yes,’ Carlos said. ‘Because at least I am helpful.’

‘So helpful,’ Max agreed, eyeing the candles contemplatively. It took him two tries to blow out all his candles.

Carlos celebrated this unofficial victory appropriately. ‘I win,’ he crowed. ‘“Max vs Carlos Birthday Edition,” 1-0 for Carlos! I win the cake,’ he decided, because otherwise it would just go to waste, uneaten (at least by him, but if Max asked nicely, he might graciously share a slice of his winnings).

‘You do?’ 

‘Yes,’ Carlos said, dragging it back towards himself. The trick to these things was to be authoritative about it, after all. ‘I win the cake. It’s mine, now.’ 

He busied himself with removing the rest of the candles, and licked his fingers once that was done. It was good cake; he’d chosen well to claim it. ‘Oh.’ He pretended to consider, trying to inconspicuously wipe his fingers on his jeans, if he should share. ‘Did any of you want some?’ 

‘I think they should sing for it,’ Max suggested.

And that was how, at the end of the briefing, the room boomed with a cacophony of birthday songs, sung loudly, off-key, out of sequence (and without regard for which song which person belted out), but very jovial. And the cake, once the paper plates and plastic forks had been distributed, so it could be enjoyed by all in a mildly civilized fashion was, indeed, delicious.

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~I make no claim as to Toro Rosso's intentions of making a birthday-themed Max vs Carlos video. I'm just saying, it's not September yet….~~  
>   
>  And, I know, I just had to make things harder on myself by writing this from the point of view of the one whose native language I don't speak.


End file.
